


Sherlock Vampires: Irene and Mycroft

by wheel_pen



Series: Sherlock Vampires AU [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, M/M, Vampires, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-16
Updated: 2015-08-16
Packaged: 2018-04-14 22:48:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4583067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheel_pen/pseuds/wheel_pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is reunited with fellow vampires Irene and his brother, and introduces them to his new human, John.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sherlock Vampires: Irene and Mycroft

**Author's Note:**

> The bad words are censored. That’s just how I do things.  
> This story has not been Britpicked. Please let me know if I get anything horribly wrong.  
> I hope you enjoy this AU. I own nothing and appreciate the chance to play in this universe.

The doorbell rang just as John was picking up the evening post from the foyer floor. He glanced around uncertainly first, not sure where Mrs. Hudson and Sherlock had gotten to; then the doorbell rang again and he decided he was being silly, and opened the door.

Two people stood there, though John was mainly captivated by the beautiful, glamorous woman in a stylish dress, her lips red, her lashes thick, her hat large. She looked like a movie star, and by the way she smiled coyly at him, that was exactly the effect she was going for.

“Well hello there,” she greeted in a sultry tone. “Aren’t you darling!”

“He seems rather ordinary to me,” the other person sniffed, unimpressed, and John tore his gaze away from the woman momentarily, turning slightly pink. The man was well-dressed with an elegant walking stick and a disdainful expression, rather bookish-looking.

“Oh, he can’t be _ordinary_ ,” the woman insisted flirtatiously, “or Sherlock wouldn’t have chosen him!”

“Oh, you must be Irene,” John realized, pleased. “Sherlock’ll be happy to see you, he’s been worried.” Irene seemed touched by this, in a slightly theatrical way; the man rolled his eyes. “Sorry, and you are?” John asked him.

“Mycroft Holmes.”

“Oh, his brother,” John realized. He didn’t really see much resemblance.

“Really, I’m shocked he’s mentioned me,” Mycroft replied boredly.

“Um, I’m not really sure where Sherlock’s got to,” John admitted after an uncomfortable pause. “Say, is that your car?” It was the largest one John had ever seen, sleek and black and parked illegally in front of the sandwich shop; two men in chauffeur’s uniforms were unloading large trunks from it onto the sidewalk.

Mycroft obviously found the question too dull to bother answering. “Is my brother _gone_ or merely _lurking_ somewhere? Perhaps we should just come back later.”

John glanced back over his shoulder into the house, as if there was any chance Sherlock could have appeared quietly, without them noticing. He felt very awkward just leaving them on the doorstep, unable to be of much help. “Well, maybe you could—“

Irene held up a gloved hand. “Oh, don’t invite us in, darling. You _really_ must check with Sherlock first.”

“Didn’t he tell you that?” Mycroft asked irritably.

“Yes, he did,” John assured him, seeing the resemblance now. “I wasn’t going to invite you in, I thought maybe I could get you some tea or something.”

“Oh, that’s sweet,” Irene cooed, as one might with a child or pet.

“We do not require tea,” Mycroft informed him coolly. “What we require is my errant brother.”

John could not magically produce him. “Do you want me to go look for him?” he offered, trying to remain polite. Two Holmes brothers were enough to test anyone. “I don’t think he’s gone out, he usually says—“

There was a whoosh behind him and Sherlock shot out the door. “Irene!” In an instant he was pressing her against the side of the car and they were kissing passionately.

John’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Watch the car,” Mycroft admonished.

“Are they, um, married, or—“ John tried to ask Mycroft, who merely scoffed unhelpfully.

Sherlock finally pulled back a little and Irene laughed, but a bit awkwardly—not something John would have associated with her, but then he saw her dabbing tears from under her eyes. “Stop,” she told Sherlock sweetly. “You’ll ruin my make-up.”

Sherlock laughed and kissed her again, and John found himself rather touched by the display of emotion. The two of them obviously had a deep connection and Sherlock had, apparently, missed her more than he’d let on.

Mycroft was decidedly _not_ touched. “Don’t stand so close to the threshold,” he advised John idly. “I could easily drag you out and snap your neck.”

“Right, thanks,” John replied, stepping back. Constructive criticism was always appreciated.

Irene was laughing again and wiping at something on Sherlock’s face with her handkerchief—when he turned back to face the building John saw he’d rubbed off some of her lipstick, which seemed to confuse him greatly. “The standards of health and hygiene in this era are exponentially greater than the last one,” he informed her in a complaining tone. “Why are women still concealing their skin with cosmetics?”

“I think you will never understand women,” Irene predicted as they walked arm-in-arm to the door.

Sherlock leaped across the threshold eagerly. “This is my new human, John,” he introduced with enthusiasm. “He’s marvelous!”

“Really?” John checked, slightly flattered.

“Well, potentially,” Sherlock downgraded, and John rolled his eyes. “But, he _let me bite him_! And he—“

“Sorry,” Mycroft interrupted, not sounding very sorry at all, “but is he going to invite us in, or are we going to stand on the street all night?”

Sherlock looked like he wanted to respond with the latter option, if only because Mycroft obviously was against it; but there was Irene to consider as well. “Alright, John, if you please…” he hinted. Mycroft snorted at his manners, which John agreed were somewhat haphazard.

“Please, come in,” he invited, looking at both Irene and Mycroft. This seemed to do the trick and they both stepped over the threshold.

“Thank you,” Mycroft replied perfunctorily.

Irene was gazing around the foyer. “Oh, she’s redecorated.” She sounded slightly disappointed.

“Well it’s been two hundred years,” Sherlock reminded her. “Mrs. Hudson! Tea and blood. Wait ‘til you see what I bought you,” he tempted Irene.

“Mycroft has been buying me things, too,” she teased, indicating the large trunks waiting to be brought in. Sherlock narrowed his eyes and Mycroft looked slightly smug; but John didn’t sense any serious rivalry there. Not with the way Irene had cried upon being reunited with Sherlock.

“Let’s go upstairs,” Sherlock prompted, and John was picked up like a piece of luggage and zipped to the living room. Sherlock placed him in the center of the couch and sat down on one side, practically on top of him, and Irene took the other side, just as close.

“Now, what do you mean, he let you bite him?” Irene wanted to know. John tried to straighten up his shoulders but they didn’t seem to get the hint to give him more space.

“He was in the cemetery, right after the bomb fell,” Sherlock explained. “Looking for people who were hurt or something—“

“It’s my job,” John cut in, trying to counteract Sherlock’s dismissive tone. “I’m a doctor,” he added to Irene, more politely.

“Oh, a doctor!” Irene cooed, sounding impressed. “And with such pretty blue eyes!” She sounded equally impressed by this, which made John wilt a little.

“So I’m _starving_ ,” Sherlock went on, “and I just grab him and bite him, and he doesn’t struggle at all! He just says, ‘Oh, stop that, stop it!’”

He wasn’t exactly mocking, but he seemed to find the incident much sillier than John had, and so did Irene. “If you push something away that’s bitten you, it will just do more damage,” John tried to protest.

“He’s so docile,” Irene complimented, stroking John’s neck a bit. “That’s _precious_.”

“Army?” Mycroft deduced, apparently speaking to John directly, which was appreciated.

“Yes, the Fifth—“

“Oh, _and_ ,” Sherlock interrupted to Irene, “he has an imaginary injury!” John sighed loudly, intensely uncomfortable. “He was shot in the shoulder, but that’s all healed up now, even the scar is gone. But his _leg hurts_! It’s something wrong in his brain.”

“It _still_ hurts?” Irene questioned. “Which leg? Would it hurt if I--?” She reached towards John’s thigh.

He caught her wrist, gently. “Yes, it would, actually,” he confirmed with a tight smile.

Irene looked past him to Sherlock. “Well that is _really_ interesting,” she agreed. “Some sort of head damage?”

“People’s emotions can get broken now, apparently,” Sherlock explained to her knowledgeably. “He was terribly frightened by the war and now he has nightmares and his _psychiatrist_ says—“

“Okay,” John finally said, pushing his way off the couch.

“Oh, he limps. Awww,” Irene noted. John did not particularly like feeling like a puppy with a sore paw, and he sat down in a chair and pretended he was busy refreshing his tea. Sherlock and Irene continued nattering to each other and he tried not to listen in case it was about him.

Instead he turned to Mycroft, who was watching him curiously. “So, um, what do you… do?” John asked, unsure of safe topics for small talk with a vampire.

“Oh, I hold a minor position in the British government,” Mycroft answered with what sounded like false modesty.

“Oh, you—work?” John asked in surprise, slightly distracted by realizing Mycroft was sipping blood from his teacup. Probably rabbit, Mrs. Hudson had a hutch out back. “I mean, among humans?”

“Well, we all must do our part, especially these days,” Mycroft remarked, and John nodded in complete agreement.

“Yes, absolutely—“

“—works at the hospital, wouldn’t give it up!” Sherlock said a bit more loudly.

“The hospital?” Irene grimaced. “With sick people? Well, that makes it easy to have a meal, I suppose.”

“No!” Sherlock countered, delighted at the novelty. “He’s forbidden me from eating his patients! Absolutely forbidden it, not even a nibble.” Irene laughed and John rolled his eyes, refocusing on Mycroft.

“So, what department are you in?” he asked.

“Oh, I merely work in a general consulting capacity,” Mycroft insisted. His tone suggested he was hoping someone would correct him and say how important he actually was. “Night hours, of course, I just pass that off as a little eccentricity, you know.”

“Oh, yes, I work the night shift, too, at the hospital,” John told him.

“Night owl?”

“Um, well, that’s where the opening was,” John corrected, a bit sheepishly.

“—chaos, so loud and strange,” Irene was relating, apparently her tale of what her experience had been upon waking. Sherlock held her hand, stroking her knuckles with his thumb. “I don’t even know what happened, really. I was just stumbling around, and I grabbed the first person I saw and drained them.” John grimaced.

“Then you felt better, didn’t you?” Sherlock encouraged sympathetically.

“Oh, much,” Irene assured him. “Except I couldn’t find you at all and everything was different! Fortunately they hadn’t moved Whitehall so I was able to find Mycroft—“

“Oh, you work at Whitehall?” John commented, suddenly realizing Mycroft’s post really _didn’t_ sound so minor.

“Small underground office,” Mycroft dismissed.

“Er—for two hundred years?” John ventured delicately. Surely _someone_ had noticed that.

“Oh, Mycroft is _literally_ a cornerstone of the British government!” Sherlock broke in, and his tone was _definitely_ mocking now. “Where would our beloved monarchy be without his advice?”

“It’s a democracy now,” Mycroft corrected coolly, sipping his blood.

“That’s, erm, quite impressive,” John told him. As soon as he said the words he realized he shouldn’t have, as the temperature in the room plunged ten degrees. He hazarded a glance at Sherlock and found him glaring. Irene’s gaze pinged between the brothers.

“Yes, it’s terribly impressive,” Sherlock began acidly, “to be moldering away in an underground—“

Mycroft’s harsh laugh cut him off. “You’re one to talk, hiding in a tomb, letting the world go to h—l around you—“

“Yes, a bloody good job _you’ve_ done preventing that—“

“Stop it,” John commanded them, exasperated. “Honestly, bickering like children. At your age.” He already had to put up with Sherlock’s dramatics, he didn’t know if he could handle Mycroft’s, too.

They both stared at him, then each other. Irene snickered slightly. John hated to be rude in front of guests, but—well, apparently they were more like family, Sherlock’s family anyway. And thus they were probably used to rudeness.

Sherlock zipped instantly from his seated position to hovering over John’s chair. “John, come back and sit on the couch with us,” he ordered, reaching for him.

“No,” John countered, stopping his hands. “I can walk back to the couch perfectly well, thank you. But please give me a little more room and stop hanging on me, you know I don’t like that.”

There was a brief hesitation, and then Sherlock agreed. “Okay.” He appeared on the couch again. John looked at him expectantly and he scooted over an inch.

With a sigh John rose and went back to the couch as well, thinking _Limps are adorable!_ as he gritted his teeth. He sat down on the center cushion and Sherlock moved away more, gesturing for Irene to do the same. They all seemed to be staring quite intensely at John, which he didn’t care for, but at least he had a little room to breathe now. Sherlock could be rather… possessive of John’s attention sometimes.

“Thank you,” John told him by way of reward, adding, “You’re definitely the most impressive vampire I know, and now that I know three, that actually means something.”

Sherlock grinned, then frowned just as suddenly. “Oh, that didn’t actually mean anything before,” he realized.

“No.”

“What unit were you in?” Mycroft wanted to know, his interest far more than casual.

“Fifth—“ Sherlock started to answer for him, then stopped with a look at John.

“Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers,” John replied, “I was Assistant Surgeon.”

“ _Captain_ ,” Sherlock put in proudly, when it looked like John wasn’t going to. John was pleased he’d remembered, though technically vampires remembered everything, according to Sherlock. They just didn’t always apply it. “More blood, darling?” he offered cordially to Irene, all tension forgotten.

“Yes, please,” she accepted. “So, um, _John_ …” she went on leadingly. He got the impression she didn’t really speak to humans that much. “Are you single?”

“ _Irene_ ,” Sherlock hissed. “That’s not really his thing.”

John boggled at him in panic and quickly tried to correct this. “Yes, actually, that _is_ my thing, though at the moment I’m single—“ He didn’t want to sound lewd, like he was propositioning Irene.

“Later I’ll tell you about some of his disastrous courting attempts,” Sherlock promised Irene in a catty tone. John turned to glare at him. “What? I said I’d tell her _later_.”

“Do you want me to tell them how you flew into a lamppost and then crushed a car when you fell out of mid-air?” John snapped, hoping this was considered embarrassing among vampires. Judging from Mycroft and Irene’s slightly undignified snorts, it was.

Sherlock gazed at him reproachfully. “That was _low_ , John,” he judged seriously.

“Well stop telling everything you know about _me_ , then,” John suggested, adding in a mutter, “At least in front of me.” In John’s defense, he didn’t have many other people to talk to, and Sherlock was generally a good audience, being fascinated by stories about life in the modern era. And until quite recently, he hadn’t had anyone _else_ to tell them to.

_Later_ , Sherlock mouthed to Irene over John’s head.

“Well, as entertaining as this has all been,” Mycroft said in a tone of finality, setting his bloody teacup aside, “I really have to get to work.” He stood and John rather felt like he should stand as well—Mycroft looked like he hoped someone would—but no one else did.

Sherlock in fact sprawled even further across the couch. “Off to save the world, Mycroft?” he asked derisively.

“Well, it’s not going to save itself, is it?” Mycroft replied pragmatically. “Clearly. Irene, darling.” They exchanged demure cheek kisses while Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Nice to meet you, John. What was your last name?”

Sherlock started to answer for him again but stopped at John’s look. “Watson,” John conveyed. He had the feeling he was going to be _researched_. “Nice to meet you.”

Mycroft turned to his brother last, looked at him for a moment, then simply said, “Sherlock.”

“Mycroft.” Sherlock put a slight sneer on the word. Then the other vampire left.

The three of them waited in silence, presumably until Mycroft was completely gone. Then Sherlock let out a sharp, scoffing breath, as though his brother had been embarrassingly ill-behaved. Frankly John thought he was the best of the lot, at least in terms of talking to John like he was a real person.

“Oh, he was quite kind to _me_ ,” Irene chided Sherlock.

“Yes, he would be, wouldn’t he?” Sherlock shot back, as though Mycroft clearly had had ulterior motives.

Irene turned her attention back to John. “I think I quite like this human of yours,” she began. “Er, you,” she corrected, speaking to John directly.

“Well, thank you, Irene,” John answered politely. “Are you going to be staying here with us?”

“Oh, yes, my room is upstairs, just down from the—from yours,” she assured him. “I expect Mrs. Hudson has put my things away already.” She gave him another speculative look. “He just seems so—“ Sherlock cleared his throat and Irene smoothly slipped her hand around John’s arm. “You, John, you just seem so calm about everything. I wonder, do you think humans in this era have lost their fear of the supernatural? Mycroft and I were discussing this. All this technology—“

“Flying machines!” Sherlock pointed out triumphantly. “And, sounds traveling thousands of miles! And, pre-sliced bread. Maybe you haven’t seen that yet,” he conceded at her look.

“Well, with technology like that, magic must seem far less impressive,” Irene suggested. “What do _you_ think, John?”

John sipped his tea. “I think the ability to rip someone’s throat out is _always_ going to be impressive, in its way,” he decided dryly, thinking of the anonymous person on the street Irene had killed shortly after waking. Not to mention Sherlock’s victims.

“Well, that’s good to know,” Sherlock replied, without a trace of irony. “Speaking of which”—John looked at him sharply, alarmed by the segue—“if it’s alright with _you,_ John, I would like you and Irene to exchange blood.”

Which was just a nice way to say she would bite him, and then he would drink some of her blood to recover. “Why?” he asked slowly, quickly adding, “No offense intended, Irene.”

“Oh, none taken, John, darling.”

“So she can keep track of you better, John!” Sherlock insisted, losing patience with politeness rather quickly. “It’s a security measure.”

“Alright, that’s fine,” John agreed. “Perfectly reasonable, I just wanted to know.” He looked back at Irene and tried not to jump when he saw her fangs were already extended.

“John prefers _wrist_ ,” Sherlock whispered to Irene, not that quietly. John barely had time to give him a look before she took his arm and chomped down.

“Ow!” he exclaimed involuntarily, and Sherlock swiftly moved to hold him still.

“John, you know not to jerk away, you were just lecturing us on that very subject,” Sherlock pointed out, managing to sound concerned, chiding, and sarcastic at the same time.

“I know, it just—“ He did not want to swear in front of a lady, even if said lady was causing him pain. “It didn’t hurt so much before.”

“Battlefield calm,” Sherlock pontificated. “Doesn’t translate well to the front parlor.”

“Lovely,” John muttered, trying to relax.

Irene detached her fangs from his arm and licked her lips delicately. “Tasty,” she purred, as Sherlock wrapped a tea towel around the wound. Then she bit her own wrist and John swallowed a few drops. “Rather dainty eater, isn’t he?” she commented to Sherlock.

“We’ll add some of your blood to the supply in the ice box,” Sherlock planned. “He likes to mix it with fruit juice. People drink that now. Unfermented.”

“Thank you,” John assured her, pushing her arm away. He peeked under the towel and saw the bite had healed already. “Much appreciated. Well, what shall—“ A quick glance to either side told him what Sherlock and Irene had in mind to do next to celebrate their reunion, and John definitely did not want to get caught in the middle of it. He launched himself from the couch right before Sherlock tackled Irene. “I’ll be in my room!” he added, racing for the stairs as he heard a crash behind him, followed by laughter. He did not turn to look back.


End file.
